Carrie Lam elected as Hong Kong’s first female Chief Executive

HONG KONG — A committee dominated by supporters of the Chinese government chose Carrie Lam as Hong Kong’s next leader on Sunday, opting for Beijing’s preferred candidate in a move likely to dismay residents who see the city’s freedoms as being under threat from China.

Mrs. Lam, a former No. 2 official in the city, received 777 out of 1,163 votes cast to become the next chief executive, as Hong Kong’s leader is called. She defeated John Tsang, a former finance secretary who polls indicated was more popular with the public.

The leader of this semiautonomous Chinese city of 7.3 million is chosen by just 1,194 electors, most of them business and political figures who have close ties to Beijing.

In an apparent act of protest, one elector drew a cross on the ballot with stickers, and another wrote a obscenity on it.

Hong Kong is guaranteed civil liberties and a high degree of autonomy under the terms of the 1997 handover that returned the city, a former British colony, to Chinese rule — an arrangement known as “one country, two systems.” But many believe China has violated that agreement with increasingly open interference in its affairs.

“China promised that Hong Kong people would run Hong Kong, and we would have a high degree of autonomy,” said Mabel Yau, 52, one of hundreds of protesters outside the voting site before the election. “Today, only 1,200 people are representing us in electing the chief executive; is it fair?”

Such concerns are unlikely to be eased by the choice of Mrs. Lam, who was a loyal deputy to Leung Chun-ying, the unpopular departing chief executive. Mrs. Lam led the failed effort to overhaul the city’s election process according to Beijing’s wishes, which prompted the so-called Umbrella Movement protests that shut down parts of the city for months in 2014.

“When the No. 2 official becomes the No. 1, there isn’t going to be much change,” said Joshua Wong, one of the leaders of those protests. “ ‘One country, two systems’ is going down the drain, and our high degree of autonomy will exist in name only,” Mr. Wong said.

The protests in 2014 were a response to Beijing’s plan to let Hong Kong choose the chief executive this year by direct popular vote. Under that plan, China would have screened the candidates — a restriction that made the so-called reform a sham, in the view of the student-led protesters who occupied the streets for months.

The local legislature rejected the proposal, meaning that a small committee again chose the city’s leader this year. But pro-democracy politicians have said they have no regrets, arguing that the plan would have bolstered Beijing’s grip on Hong Kong by giving the chief executive a false public mandate.

Since the Umbrella Movement protests, young people in particular have become even more resentful of the Chinese government, calling in growing numbers for Hong Kong’s self-determination and even independence from China. In the first major legislative elections after the protests, voters turned out in record number and elected for the first time two young, openly pro-independence politicians.

But in November, Beijing took the extraordinary step of intervening in a Hong Kong court case to prevent them from taking their seats, after they pledged allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation” during their swearing-in ceremony and inserted an anti-China snub into their oaths of office.

Fears of increasing interference from Beijing were also worsened when a bookseller and, later, a billionaire businessman disappeared from Hong Kong, later to re-emerge in police custody in mainland China. Such developments have alarmed many residents, but others are loyal to China and regard pro-democracy activists as a disruptive force.

The next chief executive, who takes office on July 1, will have to manage not only the city’s political turmoil but a rapidly aging population, low social mobility, slowing economic growth and one of the largest wealth gaps in the world.

Hong Kong’s housing is routinely ranked as even more unaffordable than London’s and New York’s, in part because of relentless demand from wealthy buyers in mainland China. Despite cooling measures enacted by the current government, average housing prices are at a record high, having more than doubled from a decade ago and far outpaced income growth.

Such economic grievances have fed calls for greater public participation in elections, though no change in that area is likely to occur quickly under the new administration. Mrs. Lam has said she will not rush to restart talks on reforming the electoral process, citing a need to avoid confrontation.